Judge blocks ICE from rearresting Kilmar Abrego Garcia for ‘foreseeable future’

A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the Trump administration has been playing games with Kilmar Abrego Garcia and issued a new order barring ICE from trying to rearrest him any time soon.

The decision is the latest in a string of victories for Mr. Abrego Garcia, who for months has thwarted the entire machinery of the Trump administration as it tries to put him behind bars and, ultimately, deport him to an unfamiliar country.

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis said the government has been sitting on a good deportation offer from Costa Rica, which has said it would welcome him.

But the Trump administration has resisted that, instead searching for an African nation to take him in. Given that and some other bungling in the case, Judge Xinis said it’s doubtful Mr. Abrego Garcia could be deported any time in the “reasonably foreseeable future.”

So she ruled he can’t be rearrested or held in detention by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“Respondents have done nothing to show that Abrego Garcia’s continued detention in ICE custody is consistent with due process,” wrote Judge Xinis, an Obama appointee to the court in Maryland. “Respondents are enjoined from taking Petitioner Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia into ICE custody.”

Mr. Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran citizen, is perhaps the most visible unauthorized immigrant in the U.S., becoming prominent after the Trump administration deported him to El Salvador last March despite an immigration judge’s order saying he wasn’t to be sent to that country.

Judge Xinis, backed by the Supreme Court, ordered him brought back. The Trump administration resisted for several months but then did an about-face and returned him — after it secured a criminal indictment accusing him of smuggling immigrants.

The Justice Department sought to keep him in pretrial detention in Tennessee, where the criminal case is pending, but the judge ordered him released.

ICE then picked him up on immigration charges, saying it would short-circuit the criminal case and deport him again.

But Judge Xinis ordered him released from immigration detention, and her ruling Tuesday stiffens the bar on him being taken again.

“Since Judge Xinis ordered Mr. Abrego Garcia released in mid-December, the government has tried one trick after another to try to get him re-detained, all of which the judge has patiently and methodically swatted down,” said Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyer.

He said the government has always had a viable off-ramp in Costa Rica, and it’s time the Trump team takes it. He urged the government not to appeal Judge Xinis’ ruling.

Judge Xinis also pointedly wondered why the administration was pursuing “phantom removals” to African nations rather than take the Costa Rica option.

“Indeed, since Abrego Garcia secured his release from criminal custody in August 2025, [the government has] made one empty threat after another to remove him to countries in Africa with no real chance of success,” she wrote.

Homeland Security didn’t respond to an inquiry for this story.

Judge Xinis’ ruling turns on a 2001 Supreme Court decision, the Zadvydas case, that set a limit on how long migrants can be detained pending deportation.

The justices said the point of immigration detention is to carry out the deportation, so if deportation isn’t imminent, a migrant must be released. The high court set six months as a reasonable limit.

Justice Department lawyers argued that because they only updated the invalid 2019 deportation order in January, the six-month clock should start again.

Judge Xinis rejected that.

She said Mr. Abrego Garcia’s time in custody last year, including time spent in a Salvadoran terrorist prison after his erroneous deportation, have more than tolled his time.

Mr. Abrego Garcia is still subject to being monitored by ICE.

He is the latest migrant to benefit from the Zadvydas ruling.

A federal judge in Louisiana earlier this month ordered three Cuban immigrants, all with homicide convictions, to be released from ICE detention, finding that the administration’s chances of deporting them any time soon were slim.

Cuba is notorious for refusing to take back its citizens from the U.S.

The administration said it was searching for other takers, but the judge said that was too speculative.